


North by Northeast

by treescape



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Happy Jon x Sansa endgame, Jon beyond the Wall, Post-Season/Series 08 Finale, Queen in the North, mentions of past trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-04-07 05:43:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19078663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treescape/pseuds/treescape
Summary: Sometimes, he comes down out of the north. His familiar shape coalesces in the rain or the sunlight or the snow, and her breath catches painfully in her throat. It is only ever in that sharp moment of relief, as his eyes catch hers across the courtyard, that she allows herself to recognize the fear that never quite goes away: that one day, he will decide he has no reason to make the long trek south to Winterfell.





	1. Prologue: Out of the North (Sansa)

Sometimes, he comes down out of the north. His familiar shape coalesces in the rain or the sunlight or the snow, and her breath catches painfully in her throat. It is only ever in that sharp moment of relief, as his eyes catch hers across the courtyard, that she allows herself to recognize the fear that never quite goes away: that one day, he will decide he has no reason to make the long trek south to Winterfell.

It’s no secret that he never comes from Castle Black, but it’s not as if anybody truly cares. As far as the Watch is concerned, his vows were fulfilled on the day he died at the hands of his brothers. As far as _she_ is concerned, he owes his allegiance to no one he does not wish to give it to.

It aches, deep inside, that there’s a north he belongs to that isn’t hers. It lays claim to his heart in a way she is afraid that she herself does not. But when he comes to her with hair that smells of cold winds and eyes that reflect the crisp expanse beyond the Wall, she cannot begrudge it. She touches his cheek and is grateful for the life she finds in his face. She hopes that maybe, in some small way, she might have a part in it.

\---

When he comes one evening, some five years after King’s Landing, the sun is so low in the sky that the last rays of light hardly deserve the distinction. He passes his horse to a stable lad and speaks to those who approach him, but his eyes, as always, seek Sansa across the distance. As she greets him, she catalogues the contours of his face, which are lined with the exertion of travel.

He looks as he always has.

When he comes to her room, she is at the window, looking out at the night. She hears the door slowly ease open and then closed, and feels his nearness like a physical thing. She follows him in her mind’s eye as moves slowly to stand behind her.

She doesn’t turn to face him right away, savouring the feel of his chest against her shoulders. His fingers brush at her waist and his face touches his hair. The heat of him at her back makes the chill off the glass even stronger.

“Arya and Bran?” Jon’s voice is low, and it always hurts that he asks as if he doesn’t deserve to know. “Sam?”

“All well,” she tells him, surprised by the calmness in the cadence of her own words. She turns her head just enough to catch a glimpse of pale skin and dark curls. “They’ve all sent letters for you.”

“I’d like to read them, in the morning.” His breath is against her temple, and finally, she turns so she can look fully upon his face. He is enough to take her breath away, so beautiful that it is almost as difficult to look at him as it is to look away. Her longing seems insurmountable, sometimes, even when he’s right here within her reach.

They both move at once. If the first brush of lips is a tentative greeting after long months apart, the second is frantic in a way that makes her feel both weak unto fainting and desperately alive. He breathes her name like a prayer, and she thinks she would give him anything in that moment.

Clothing falls to the floor piece by piece, and he touches every part of her reverently. His mouth presses along the line of her jaw, down the arc of her neck, and she doesn’t know how she bears it when he is gone.

She tries to coordinate her hands, pushing beneath his tunic to feel bare skin, and he stops for a moment to press his forehead against hers. His hands cup her face, and his thumbs stroke back and forth as if he cannot stop touching her.

“I miss you all the time,” he tells her hoarsely. “Sometimes I think I’ll go mad if I can’t see your face.”

The words twist her heart, because she knows his deepest fears. They are words he would only ever say to her.

She feels her lips curve into a tremulous smile. “You can see it now.”

“I can,” he says. His lips brush the slope of her nose, the rounds of her cheeks, the tip of her chin. “Tell me.” His voice is hoarse, and his mouth only leaves her skin for long enough to get out the words.

He has never not asked, and she loves him for it.

“Yes, Jon,” she says, and his lips continue their exploration as she draws him to the bed. 

“Tell me how.”

She catches his head between her hands and tugs, because she needs to see his eyes again. She needs to know what is in them.

“Slow,” she says. “And hard.”

When he slides into her, his back against her mattress and her body over his, it is so excruciatingly slow she thinks she might die of it. It is one of the best things she has ever felt.

\---

Later, in the aftermath, his body curves along her back. His arm rests about her waist, and for a time, the only sound is the rise and fall of their breathing.

“You can stay, if you want to,” she finally whispers, as always, into the darkness. They both know she doesn’t just mean tonight. It isn’t a command, nor even a request. She will never put that burden on him. She offers the words into the air between them because she needs him to know he still _has_ that choice. She will never try to take it away from him.

It takes him so long to respond that she wonders if maybe he won’t. She wonders what that might mean, and lies awake to the warm press of his skin on hers. Finally, she feels his lips purse in the instant before they press, hard, against her bare shoulder. His arm tightens around her waist as his mouth moves to graze the shell of her ear. In a moment, he will tell her goodnight, and they will fall asleep in a tangle of limbs. He will stay a day, maybe two, maybe three, and one morning she will wake to find him waiting for her, because he will never leave without saying goodbye.

But he doesn’t speak for a long time. When he does, he tightens his arm again and waits for a reaction first. He never tries to drown his words in darkness or sleep, never tries to hide them from her. It is one of the linchpins of her life. She stirs in his hold and he whispers his confession into the night: “I’m not very good at making choices.”

_You’re still making a choice _, she could tell him. _Leaving me is a choice. Everything is a choice_. But she will not say it, because she knows that isn’t what he means. Some choices are different than others.__

__She rubs her fingers along the cords of his arm. “Then don’t make it until you’re ready,” is what she finally says. It hurts, to think he might never be. She tries to tell herself that it’s not about her, not a commentary on what he feels for her. For Jon to really and truly come back to Winterfell would mean a lot of different things to a lot of people. “But you can always come back. No matter what.”_ _

__His words come immediately, this time._ _

__“I’ll always come back, Sansa. That’s not a choice that has to be made.”_ _


	2. Chapter 1: Daylight and Dark (Jon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon awakens very shortly after first light. The drapes at the window are heavy, but just enough grey filters in to break the uniformity of pitch darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timeline wise, this picks up right after the prologue.

Jon awakens very shortly after first light. The drapes at the window are heavy, but just enough grey filters in to break the uniformity of pitch darkness. There is no disorienting moment of half-wakefulness in which he wonders where he is; the scent of Sansa’s skin and the soft sound of her breathing hit him at once. The weight of her body next to his is as familiar as the rise and fall of his own chest.

At some point in the night he’s turned onto his back, and Sansa is curled at his side. Her head is on his shoulder, one warm cheek tucked against him, and when he turns his head he can just barely make out the red of her hair on the pillows.

He dreams of this, beyond the Wall. Sometimes it is so real that when he wakes alone to his tiny cabin near Hardhome, it is almost like grief, and she another thing lost.

But Sansa _isn’t_ lost, and he very suddenly longs to hear her voice in the dawn as further proof. He shifts so he can wrap his arm around her slender frame, pulling her closer, and the feel of her skin as it slides against his is well worth the jaw-bracing feel of fading numbness.

“I can tell you’re awake, you know.” His own voice sounds too loud in his ears, and he hopes he hasn’t startled her. “You always hold yourself a little too still.”

“I’m _not_ awake,” she protests, her voice groggy but firm. She’d likely come to consciousness just moments before him. “I refuse to be.” She burrows in closer and turns her face into his chest as if to block out any hint of growing daylight. “It’s too early to be daylight yet.”

Jon wants to smile, but Sansa can’t see his face. He rarely smiles anymore if not for the benefit of others. Still, the tone of her voice warms something in his chest, and he rubs his thumb along the soft inside of her elbow. “Shall I go tell the sun he’s not welcome in Winterfell today?”

“Yes,” she says immediately. The word is muffled, and he can feel it reverberate against his body like a second heartbeat. Her unguarded words and movements make him ache, a little. Some things are so easy between them, no matter how many weeks or months he’s been gone.

Others aren’t, of course, but mostly they take those as they come.

He combs his fingers through her hair, careful not to let them catch on any tangles, and she arches her neck to give him better access. After a moment, she moves so she can press a kiss against his collarbone, and then a second and a third before pressing her cheek back to his shoulder. They lay like that, and Jon thinks that this is what peace is.

“I have to meet with Maester Wolkan this morning,” Sansa says after a time, her voice more awake. She turns in his arms to properly face him, and he memorizes the curve of her cheek and the sweep of her brow for the hundred time. They are like gifts, and if he does not deserve them, he cannot bring himself to refuse them either. “Will you breakfast with me first?”

“Happily,” he responds, but he can sense that she’s not quite ready to rise yet and is selfishly glad for his own sake. He’d be happiest if he could tug the covers over their heads and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist. “What is it you’re meeting about today?”

“Trade agreements,” she says, and there’s a note of exasperation in her words that the knows isn’t aimed at him. They’ve struck a delicate balance over the years. Early on, he’d been too hesitant to even ask after her affairs, afraid she would think he had come to usurp her place. She, in turn, had feared he simply didn’t care anymore. He doesn’t, truth be told, as far as the politics of it go. But he draws a firm distinction between not wanting to get drawn into statecraft again and interest in Sansa’s life and well-being.

He makes a non-committal noise to prompt her to continue, if she wishes.

“Bran’s Master of Coin seems to think he can still commit highway robbery,” she replies archly.

“Lumber?” Jon guesses sympathetically. So many regions were still rebuilding from the wars that had consumed the land for so long. He wouldn’t be surprised if lumber prices were a main point of contention for many years to come.

“Wool!” Sansa exclaims in disgust. “I’m willing to set a fair price, but I swear, he wants the whole sheep _and_ the barn it lives in for a quarter the cost of a single skein. And he expects me to think he’s doing us a favour!”

Jon trails his fingers lightly along her arm, just for the contact. “Somehow I get the feeling it’s not going to work out very well for him.”

She hums her agreement, and he almost wants to go with her so that he can see her in her element.

But Jon is not for meetings and bureaucracy and command anymore, if he ever was. So he lies in her bed, limbs tangled with hers, and savours her presence for as long as he can.

\---

After breakfast, Sansa hands him a small stack of letters before she leaves to attend to her morning duties. Jon carefully dons his cloak and tucks the sealed parchments inside before making his way out of the keep alone.

Winterfell has changed, some, since its rebuilding, but not so much that Jon could ever get lost. It’s just enough to hit him in the oddest ways—rooms that are a little differently sized, or buildings that look roughly the same but are of a slightly different stone. It’s a little like being in a dream, where everything is so close to being right that it feels more alien than someplace he’s never seen in his life.

Somehow it still feels so much like home, and he’s never quite sure how to feel about that. Happy, he thinks, in a sense, but a little sad too. He knows that he can never really have this, can never really be here in the way he wants to be for long. Too quickly, the walls will start to close in. The whispers and the looks and the expectations will begin to feel like drowning and fire and death all at once.

Every time Sansa tells him he can stay, he knows he can never make that choice, because he knows where his choices always seem to inevitably lead—to pain, and to war, and to hell. He comes only often enough to keep them both sane.

The people has passes on his way to the courtyard react in different ways. Some ignore him and scurry along about their tasks, while others look at him askance as if unsure what they should say or do. Most are used to his comings and goings by now and smile in greeting or say a few words before continuing on about their day. Maester Wolkan looks at him as if he wants to speak to Jon, but then moves off in the direction of Sansa’s solar instead.

Outside, the day is clear and bright, if somewhat brisk. He hesitates for a moment by the door to the crypt before lighting a torch and slowly making his way down the weathered steps. There is little evidence, now, of the damage caused over five years ago. He is always grateful, when he is here, that so many of the original statues survived.

It still hurts to see Ned here, his graven face so lifeless and cold. It hurts even more to see Rickon and Robb beside him. He can understand now, in a way he never could as a child, why Ned would look so tired after visiting the crypt. Jon has learned what it is to turn and climb into daylight, leaving two siblings and a father behind him.

He hadn’t meant to stay more than a few minutes, but as always, he ends up looking at the likeness of his mother for a long time. He knows he supposedly has much of Lyanna in his looks, but there are few yet alive who knew her face when she still drew breath. He wishes he could have known her, that he didn’t have to imagine the sound of her voice or the tilt of her smile. Bran tells him what he can, when Jon asks, but it isn’t the same. It is impossible to describe in mere words the shape of lips on a syllable or the crease of laughter around the corners of one’s eyes.

He wonders, as he stares at her lifeless figure, what Lyanna and Rhaegar had felt when they learned of the war their love had provoked, and he wishes very suddenly that he hadn’t come. Not to Winterfell, necessarily—despite everything, Winterfell meant Sansa—but to the darkness and despair of the crypts. He finds it too easy to remember his own wars, here, surrounded by these effigies of the dead. He can hear his ghosts in the dry rustle of his own cloak as he reaches out to touch fingers to stone. There are so many of them, and he will never be able to count them all.

Tyrion’s parting words to him in King’s Landing still echo duly in his ears. _“You saved millions, Jon. Never forget that.”_ He had reached out as if to grip Jon’s hand, but then let his arm fall to his side. _“Take care of yourself.”_

He wonders if Tyrion would consider the order in any way fulfilled, and somehow he doubts it.

Well, Jon is alive, and sometimes he’s even happy. He can almost forget, for a time, when the wind is in his face and his muscles ache from the all-consuming task of survival in the far northeast. Here, in Sansa’s bright presence, he’s even been known to laugh on occasion. He’s moved on, after a fashion, as much as he can. Some would say it’s more than he deserves, and Jon is one of them. He might have saved millions, but he had been far too late to save so many others. He can still hear the screams and feel the heat of the fires on his face in King’s Landing. The smell haunts his nightmares even now, and sometimes he wakes choking on the memory of smoke.

Sometimes those dreams mix with others—the crush of bodies in battle, the scrabble of wights over ice, the slide of steel into fabric and flesh and the dead weight of a body he bears to the ground.

The last is as hard to dispel as the others, which feels wrong to him, in a way. Sometimes he thinks it should be the easiest. He had done what was right, and he knows that for certainty now: he cannot imagine doing differently when he thinks of Bran and Arya, of Sam and Gilly and Davos, of the thousands who would have burned to achieve Dany’s goal. He cannot look on Sansa’s face and regret that he has done what he must to protect her.

But guilt, he has learned, does not let you choose when it comes, or where or why or for whom. Catelyn Stark might not have treated him as a son, but he had grown up with the Tully words in his mind. Even now he can hear the reverent tone of her voice reciting them to her children: _Family, duty, honour._ They had been bitter words to hear as a child, not meant for him, but he had tried to live them as best he knew how.

He had thought that Daenerys was family, and duty, and honour. She had been a beautiful dream, once—a promise of peace, a queen who wrought justice with compassion and loyalty. He had promised to follow her to the ends of the earth.

And in the end, he had killed her for another family and a higher duty and honour.

Sansa had asked him, early on, what had finally made him do it. He’d told her the truth: for all who would burn, but mostly, always, for Bran and for Arya and for her. She had looked at him, and knowing how much his word meant to him, had asked a question in a voice that held a hint of sadness and fear. _“Do you hate me for it?”_

He hadn’t hesitated, had pretended not to see the relief in her eyes when his answer came freely. _“Never.”_

That didn’t mean that his treacherous blade hadn’t left scars, of a sort, because if there’s one thing Jon knows, it’s about knives and scars and dying at the hands of family for someone else’s conviction of duty and honour.

Abruptly he turns on his heel and climbs back into the light. He tells himself he won’t come again, but he knows it’s a lie. With conscious intent, he keeps his hands at his sides and does not touch his own ravaged chest through his shirt.

Scars could fade, it was true, however imperceptibly the process might feel in the moment.

Sometimes it just took a lifetime.

And he had so many scars.

\---

Jon goes to the godswood to read his letters. After the crypt, he doesn’t think he can stand to be within walls, and he knows that the sun and the air will do him good.

Ghost joins him from wherever he got off to during the night, and Jon sifts his fingers through the direwolf’s rough fur as they stand beneath the weirwood tree. He waits for a time, just feeling the cool air. He doesn’t want to read the words of people he loves while thoughts of betrayal and death are still on him.

Finally, when the sun has reached about halfway to noon, he pulls the letters from within his cloak. It’s been four months since he was last in Winterfell and had news of those he cares for most dearly; he’s eager to know what they say.

Sam has sent two, thick with gossip and stories and things he has read. Jon remembers the painfully careful notes Sam would send at first, as if unsure what might be considered safe ground. His letters these days are a far cry from those, and Jon is grateful. He is pleased that Sam enjoys his work, that he has a deep and abiding respect for Bran, that Gilly is well, and that a third child has arrived. 

Tucked away at the end of Sam’s second letter, _where Maester Samwell has kindly left me some room_ , is a note from Davos. Jon smiles, because it is not much room, truly. Sam does so like to write. There is no need to update Jon on the news, Davos presumes— _but whatever Maester Samwell says, I am certainly not “sweet” on Lady Hallsworth. It was but once dance._

Jon shakes his head and decides that he prefers to believe Sam before setting the letters aside. Davos deserves whatever happiness he can find.

Bran’s letter is brief and more to the point. It isn’t cold or unfriendly, exactly, but still somehow removed in the way Bran has been since his return to Winterfell during the wars. From what Sansa and Arya tell him, there is not much left of the brother they once knew. Jon thinks he’s still there, a little. The King of the Six Kingdoms might be something more than Bran, now, but if he’s all-remembering, then he must remember the boy he was. His handwriting is no longer that of a child, but it still slants slightly to the right and he still doesn’t dot his i’s. He wishes Jon well, and trusts that Sam has shared all the news, and hopes that Jon will stay in Winterfell at least a few days this time.

Jon frowns, for a moment, unsure quite what to think, before slowly setting Bran’s letter atop Sam’s.

He’s deliberately saved Arya’s for last. His little sister tends to split her time between Winterfell, expeditions west, and Storm’s End, where she is now. Or was, at least, when she wrote; according to Arya’s notation, the letter is over a month old.

The letter is long; she’s as much of a chatterbox in writing as she is in person, at least to him. As he reads her words, he can hear them in her voice. She’s found more islands, small and deserted, but _new_. She and Sansa continue to grow closer, the distance of their youth shrinking through shared memories and loss. Gendry hasn’t married yet, and she wonders if he ever will. She thinks, sometimes, that she should stop visiting him.

She won’t say as much, but Jon knows she visits Gendry because she loves him. She just loves her freedom, too, and doesn’t know how to reconcile the two. He wonders how long Gendry will wait, and he thinks it might be the end of the Baratheons—again.

He very, very carefully does not think about Sansa and the Starks.

He reads the rest slowly, drinking in her words, but eventually he reaches the end. Arya has signed her name, and inked in a little direwolf, and there at the bottom has scrawled a few more lines.

_Look after Sansa, when you’re there. And try to let her look after you too. You both need someone to look after, so long as it isn’t always me._

It’s so much like Arya that it almost hurts, but he goes back to the top for another read.

When he finally looks up, Ghost has disappeared, and Jon knows that he’s probably gone off to find Sansa. In a little while, he while join them.

But for now, he sits with the shade of the weirwood and the light of the sun, and thinks about the living.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the feedback on the prologue, and thank you for reading!
> 
> Also, I don’t know how long direwolves live, but like hell am I killing Ghost.


	3. Chapter 2: Memories and Ghosts (Sansa)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He was the first thing she had really found again, after King’s Landing and the Vale and the Boltons. He will always feel like home to her.

Sometimes Sansa still feels like an imposter, here in this room where her father had conducted so much of his business. The light will fall just so through the window, or a voice will echo at a certain register, and suddenly she will be a child again with Ned Stark’s face smiling down at her. Even now it is sometimes difficult to believe he will not walk through the door and look at her quizzically, as if to ask why she is in his chair.

She had been so afraid, at first, that everyone would be able to just look at her and _know_ how desperately she was trying to assume her father’s impartial countenance, her mother’s calm and careful pragmatism. It’s eased with time, become more natural, but she still wants so badly to take the best of them and let it guide her always.

Sansa hopes that they would have been proud of her. She thinks that they would have been. Sometimes, in the dark of night or the quiet of her room at dusk, she lets herself hold onto the bitter sweetness of that thought. She would give almost anything for one more evening at her mother’s feet, Catalyn’s hands moving slowly and carefully as she brushes Sansa’s hair. Anything, for the sight of her father’s smile at her latest amateur piece of embroidery.

Maester Wolkan finishes making his notations on the trade proposal before carefully cleaning his pen and tucking it away. Sansa shelves the memories into the deepest recesses of her mind, to be pulled out later, like the treasures they are. “I will have a fair copy to you this afternoon, Your Grace. Ser Bronn cannot but say it is equitable.”

Sansa’s response is to simply lift an eyebrow, and Maester Wolkan almost, _almost_ smiles. 

“If he doesn’t, he can get all of his lumber from the Vale,” Beth Cassel says archly, and this time, Maester Wolkan _does_ smile. Little Robyn Arryn—who really isn’t so little anymore, Sansa must always remind herself—prizes his resources highly indeed.

“I think we’d all give a great deal to sit in on those negotiations,” Sansa says lightly, unable to keep the amusement out of her voice. She smiles at the other two people in the room. “Thank you both. I believe that is all for now.”

Maester Wolkan moves to gather his parchments, but Beth speaks again before he or Sansa can rise. “There is one more matter,” she says, a slight edge to her voice that catches Sansa’s full attention at once. Beth has one of the evenest tempers she knows. “It is one of some importance.”

“Go on,” Sansa tells her curiously. The only of Ser Rodrik’s children to survive, Beth had very quickly become one of Sansa’s closest confidantes and advisors. No one calls her Sansa’s Hand, because the North is not Westeros anymore, but she fulfills many of the same duties.

“We received a message from Yara Greyjoy this morning.”

There is silence in the room, aside from the rustle of sleeves as Beth hands a rolled missive to Sansa. Sansa looks at Beth levelly before she accepts the thin parchment and unrolls it, smoothing it out so she can read the cramped writing. She scans the words slowly, and then reads them again before passing the parchment to Maester Wolkan. Somewhere, in a distant part of her head, she watches it roll in on itself as it passes from hand to hand, before Maester Wolkan unfurls it again.

Her stomach feels as if it might rise. It feels as if she is in free fall, and the memories rushing through her mind are the wind that tears past her body as it spins out of control.

“She wants to send a foster,” Sansa finally says into the stillness, opening the conversation by stating the obvious. Perhaps it will give her more time to gather her thoughts. A girl child, Yara has written. Not her own daughter, who is still too young. A somewhat distant cousin who is now almost as close a relation as Yara possesses.

A Greyjoy in Winterfell.

For all that Theon had done to help her escape Ramsay, for all that she had grown to care for him in those harrowing days of their escape from Winterfell, for all that he had died protecting Bran…

All of those things had followed betrayals she still felt in her bones. Robb, believing that Theon was coming to his aid while Theon planned to attack Winterfell. Ser Rodrik Cassel, beheaded for show. The farmer’s boys killed in Bran and Rickon’s place. The Boltons, to whom Theon had made Winterfell so vulnerable.

_So vulnerable._

“It is a good idea,” Maester Wolkan says, and the steady sound of his voice brings Sansa back to the present with such a ferocity that she is almost dizzy. “It is certainly something we should consider pursing, although carefully, of course. Westeros has used a fosterage system for centuries to promote friendships.” He hesitates, and then forges on. “As you have refused all offers of marriage, Your Grace, fosterage is one of the best ways left to us.”

“We aren’t Westeros,” Sansa says stiffly. “We needn’t abide by all of their traditions.” She doesn’t grace his comments on marriage with an answer, and knows he doesn’t expect one at the moment anyway. They’ve had this conversation before, and they will have it in the future, she is sure. It is one of the few matters that they continually disagree on, but now is not the time.

“We have won our independence, and there is peace, but we should not turn the request down outright,” Beth replies, in agreement with Maester Wolkan. Sansa can see the tightness in her face, and knows she is thinking of her father, but her voice doesn’t waver. Beth has had more time to process. The light reflects off of her friend’s dark braid as Beth gives a shake of her head. Sansa thinks idly that it looks as if the other woman is trying to shake clinging droplets of water from her face. “Your brother will brook no open hostilities, but it is still necessary to strengthen alliances.”

“Then why not pursue an arrangement with the Riverlands? The Vale? Dorne?” Sansa breaks out, grasping randomly for any region but the Iron Islands.

“The North already has ties of blood to the Riverlands and the Vale, Your Grace,” Maester Wolkan replies with a shrug of his shoulders. “And these days, the Dornish are almost as wary of sending their people north of the Red Mountains as we are of sending them south of the Neck.”

They are fair points, particularly regarding Dorne. Some betrayals, Sansa knows, are difficult to lay aside no matter who sits on the throne. It would take more than five years and a different King for Dorne to forget the death of Oberyn Martell; they still had not forgotten the death of his sister Elia so long ago. Such wounds do not heal quickly.

In all honesty, Sansa had thought that for Yara Greyjoy, Daenerys’s death would be similar—a wound that would not heal, or perhaps a would that Yara would not _let_ heal. Perhaps Sansa has been wrong, but it is still a cause for concern. Sansa must assume that the Greyjoys _know_ that Jon hasn’t been sequestered at the Wall as commanded, that he’s been spotted in the North on numerous occasions. It isn’t that Sansa thinks anyone would give that information away—not Sam or Davos in King’s Landing, certainly not Bran or Arya, and not the men or women of the North. Not to Yara Greyjoy, not to a Southerner.

In the end, after all, even those who had betrayed the Starks to the Boltons had followed a Northman. And if most Northerners didn’t want to think too long on Jon being Rhaegar Targaryen’s son, to them he would always still be Ned Stark’s erstwhile bastard, Lyanna Stark’s boy returned.

The North would always claim him, and that meant that the North would always protect him from the South.

But Sansa is also fully aware that the North isn’t closed off from the rest of the continent, and if there’s one thing Sansa knows is true about the world, it is that news usually finds a way to travel.

_Especially_ when you don’t want it to.

“The Greyjoys would be a good choice,” Maester Wolkan insists. “Not enemies, but not friends. Precisely the type of alliance it can sometimes be necessary to secure.”

Sansa presses her lips together in a thin line. She doesn’t know if she wants a Greyjoy around Jon. She doesn’t know if she wants a Greyjoy around _her_. They _aren’t_ enemies, exactly, but there is troubled history between Winterfell and the Iron Islands. The matter will require delicacy.

“I’ll think about it,” she finally says, and she will.

\---

It is past halfway to noon by the time Sansa leaves her solar, firmly putting the issue of the Greyjoys out of her mind. She has other things to attend to; she will have to give the matter her full attention later.

She knows it will be better to allow her thoughts to settle, anyway. She had said she would think about it, and she means to do so with a clear head.

She makes her rounds through Winterfell, stopping at the laundry and the kitchens before making her way outside to the stables and the armoury. She might be the Queen of the North, but she is still, always, the Lady of Winterfell too. She likes to keep track of the daily workings of the castle as much as possible, not because she doesn’t trust others to do the job, but because she wants her people to know she is there to help if the need ever arises.

Sansa has seen too many careless monarchs in the past to ever distance herself from the minute details of everyday life.

As the sun climbs closer to its height, Ghost joins her out of nowhere. Sansa stoops to gently run a hand over the top of his head and behind his ears. The direwolf had been nowhere to be seen that morning or the night before, and she is glad of the chance to greet him now. Jon had commented, once, that Ghost was liable to abandon him to stay with her; they both know it isn’t so, but Sansa is still pleased whenever Ghost chooses to spend time with her. Jon, she guesses, is likely in the godswood. He spends much of his time in Winterfell there, when he isn’t with her. She wonders if it makes him feel a little like he is still beyond the Wall—in two places at once, joining one of his worlds to the other.

When she’s finished making her rounds with Ghost, Sansa briefly considers going back inside. Instead, she finds her feet on the worn path to the godswood and the heart tree that graces its center.

She stops when she sees Jon beneath leaves of red, sunlight and shadows upon his face. The wind tugs at his hair and the fur on his cloak and her breath catches a little, as it always does. He sits amongst the gnarled roots of the tree, and she can see several sheets of parchment held gently between the fingers of one hand.

She doesn’t want to intrude.

But before she can leave as quietly as she has come, Jon looks up and shifts, as if automatically, to make a space for her next to him. He looks at her expectantly and she smiles back as she moves to join him. The heat of him through his cloak is comforting as she lowers herself to the ground and leans in. He moves so that he can tuck his cloak in around the both of them, and Sansa sits for a time, content.

Hunger, she is sure, will drive them both inside soon enough to see what they can hunt down for a late lunch. There will be more tasks and duties, and she will have to think— _really_ think—about the Greyjoys.

But for now, she just enjoys the sound of the wind and the close press of Jon’s body as she lets the rest of the tension finally drain from her limbs. 

He was the first thing she had really found again, after King’s Landing and the Vale and the Boltons. He will always feel like home to her.

He will always feel like safety.

\---

That night, she maps his body with hers and wants to shiver with the pleasure of it as he returns touch for touch. Sometimes, she is so caught up in memorizing every moment, tucking them away against the future, that she almost forgets to be in the present with him. Tonight, she tries to just feel.

Hair catches against the pads of her fingers as they run over his chest and stomach, scattered everywhere but the raised white ridges of his scars. Those are as smooth as ever, almost like glass or ice, only warmer, somewhat. Her own scars are thinner, finer. But in so many ways she and Jon are still a matched set, scarred inside and out.

He rolls her beneath him, and she presses her head back against the soft weight of the pillows as he moves above her. His beard rasps over the skin of her breasts, and her stomach, and her inner thighs as he makes his way downward. A part of her wants to keep her sounds and reactions locked within, tamped down, hidden deep where they cannot be taken from her. It is in her nature to keep her thoughts to herself.

Or perhaps it has just become so, over the years.

But it’s Jon, and so she lets herself go. One heel is over his shoulder, but the other digs into the mattress, and she knows he can feel the tense and release of the muscles in her leg. Her breath feels ragged in her throat, and she knows he can hear it catch on air that is thick around them. She doesn’t try to stop her hand from shaking—just a quiver, really—as it clenches in his dark curls. And when she finally cannot stand it anymore, she guides his head to where she wants it and lets him hear her fall to pieces as his lips and his tongue stroke against her.

When she has come back to her senses at least a little, she feels his lips curve into an ephemeral smile before his head lifts and his eyes meet hers. There is a question, there. She knows he is capable of bringing her to release more than once before he finally enters her with more than fingers or tongue. But he suddenly seems very far away, and so she shakes her head and struggles to shape words.

“No,” she manages shakily, and he is moving back up her body before the syllable has completely left her lips. “Later. Please. You…I want you _in_ me, Jon.”

His body settles firmly against hers, and the shock of it is a relief. His chest is against her breasts, his legs are tangled with hers, and he is so hard along her hip that he must be close to pain. Later, she will wrap her fingers around his length and watch as it slides through them, and when his hands dig fleeting white crescents into her skin, she will ruin him with her mouth.

For now, she waits until she can feel every last inch of him within her body, and then she wraps her legs as tightly around his waist as she can, so that he must keep his thrusts short and deep. He grinds against where she is still so sensitive, and when she tightens around him she can hear his groan. She doesn’t want to stop hearing that sound, and so she does it again, deliberately, until he hikes one of her legs up higher to allow himself more freedom to move.

He is desperate against her, and she doesn’t know what it says about her that she is glad. She doesn’t think she could bear to be alone in this.

She can admit that it scares her, a little. She’s worked so hard to be strong for the North, but sometimes she thinks he could so easily destroy her.

When she’s being honest, she will even admit that it scares her a _lot_.

Much later, as Jon sleeps beside her, Maester Wolkan’s words come back unbidden. _You have refused all offers of marriage, Your Grace._

Jon is far from the only reason she hasn’t married.

But Sansa knows it is impossible to imagine she will ever love anyone else with the abandon she loves Jon. Perhaps it is for the best.

He is the only one who will ever be able to truly break her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the continued feedback, and for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> For the most part, point of view will alternate chapter by chapter. Backstory will be filled in as the story progresses. Thanks so much for reading!


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